


Gavin Free

by Really_Lame_Fiction



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Everybody Lives, M/M, Others Mentioned - Freeform, World War Z AU, Zombie AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 03:06:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2134749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Really_Lame_Fiction/pseuds/Really_Lame_Fiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[It’s a warm day, almost unusual for this time of year. I meet with Gavin Free at a local pub, his insisted choice of venue. He’s scruffy to look at and thin to match, like most after the war, but he tells me he’s always looked this way. His grin is genuine and something rarely seen these days,]</p><p>((Based on the book ‘World War Z’ where survivors of the zombie war retell their story of survival.))</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gavin Free

**Austin, Texas, United States of America.**

**[It’s a warm day, almost unusual for this time of year. I meet with Gavin Free at a local pub, his insisted choice of venue. He’s scruffy to look at and thin to match, like most after the war, but he tells me he’s always looked this way. His grin is genuine and something rarely seen these days, his voice still warm and full of life. We get stared at from our spot at a small booth, his loud voice drawing attention, but not for negative reasons. People liked seeing optimism, and this man seems to radiate it.]**

 

I pretty much had my head in the sand, to be completely honest. Figured it was none of my business, someone else would worry about it. It was just another public health scare, like the swine flu and all that rubbish. I was in America, American’s liked to overreact. It didn’t take long for the reality of the situation to kick in, honestly, one day I was excited about the newest zombie game to be released, the next I was living one! It was crazy, how hard it hit out of the blue. It went from people thinking it was propaganda, to monsters beating down their door in less than a couple of days. I was at home when I first encountered one, I lived in a small granny flat out the back of my friend’s place, so it wasn’t a lot of protection you can imagine.

I heard this loud banging at my door, and I just figured it was my mate Geoff. He was always making a lot of noise, wasn’t all that unusual. So I opened the door, and was just a bit caught off guard by my neighbor Terry attacking me in his pajamas, mouth drooling out some black sludge. Geoff said I screamed liked a girl, he wasn’t wrong. Luckily he wasn’t far away at the time; he clubbed Terry in the back of the head with his shotgun hard enough to splatter his brains. I was really out of it after that. Shocked I guess. Geoff dragged me inside with his wife and daughter.

Geoff was in the army, see, he was good at taking charge and what not. We had the car packed with every supply we had and were on the road in less than fifteen minutes. Griffon, Geoff’s wife, was driving, Geoff on the phone to everyone we knew, leaving me and his daughter Millie in the back. I didn’t know where we were going, what the plan was, and I didn’t care. I was too worried, too nervous.

We ended up at our company’s building, we worked at a place called Roosterteeth, and we were kind of like a family there. Met up with a lot of mycolleagues, they all seemed equally spooked. They had all brought everything but the kitchen sink with them, which was good. Three of my mates Ryan, Joel and Gus had actually stocked up weeks before, buying all the canned food and water they could. They were always smart like that, if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have survived I don’t think.

 

**And how did you survive?**

Bloody luck, that’s how. We were some of the only people not to run north, and instead barricaded ourselves in our building. It was the perfect place for it. The building was two stories, so we boarded up the ground floor completely, sealing every possible exit or entry. Then, we went to the second story and completely destroyed the stairs up. Burnie thought of it that bloody genius. At that point we were basically a floating fortress! We even had bathrooms and a shower, not that the water worked for long. Maybe lasted a couple of weeks, which is better than most people had.

The months that followed were rough, being trapped in the second story of a building with over twenty people. But no one complained, not once. We knew we had it good compared to the rest of the county, we’d listen to Geoff’s old radio every day, and the stuff we heard was horrific. So we ate our disgusting food and we slept toe to toe with one another and played cards and drank our beer, all knowing just how good we had it.

 

**So you all survived? All of your friend and family, I mean?**

**[His smile drops at my words.]**

No, not saying that at all. My mum and dad, my brother, my best friend Dan. I lost them all, back in England. I didn’t take that well, I was a mess actually. Here I was in my little hidey-hole, cowering behind cement walls with all the food and water I could need while my family was on the other side of the word getting slaughtered.

**[His eyes glaze, his entire domineer changing at the topic]**

I sobbed, inconsolable to say the least. Never cried once my entire adult life, you know that? Not once, not in till that day. I was completely useless, it was pathetic. Worse was I seemed to be dragging the whole group down. It’s funny how you can be so completely thrown off the rails, how scattered and irrational your mind can be. Ryan took care of me most of the time, making sure I ate and what not. Geoff did as well, but he had a wife and small kid to take care of. How selfish would I have to be to take him away from them? Most everyone had someone else to take care of in their life, which was how I ended up with Ryan.

We got married after the war passed. At some point during the time we spent together trapped in the top half of the building we promised each other we would. People told us we shouldn’t, that it was just the war that forced us together, that we had tricked ourselves into love. Turned out they were wrong. It’s been almost a year since the great panic and I still can’t believe it took the apocalypse to make me realize how much I loved the guy.

We help each other through the rough nights. Everyone alive knows what that means, the rough nights. Waking up in a cold sweat, tears you hadn’t even known you’d shed. You can still hear the screaming and the moaning, the sound of gunshots and then the silence. We heard it all from our little box, where we closed our eyes and tried to block out the horror around us.

I know I suffer from survives guilt. The knowledge that I was safe with friends while people were out suffering, dying, having to watch as they lost loved ones to the plague.

**[He smiles again, but this time it’s different, like I can finally see through a ruse.]**

So I smile and laugh in public, make sure to wink at the waitress and crack a joke. I make sure even on days I feel nothing but anguish I can at least make a stranger grin. Because they sure as hell need the pick-me-up more than I do.

 


End file.
